1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electrical connectors, and in particular to a connector for interconnecting printed circuit boards.
2. Description of Related Art
In computers and other electronic devices, electrical connections may become necessary among large numbers of printed circuit boards. Conventionally this has required the inclusion of transitional printed circuit boards which are positioned between and connect to two groups of printed circuit boards. The transitional board serves to make the electrical connections among the various printed circuit boards thus grouped. This obviously is disadvantageous by requiring an extra printed circuit board which is electrically connected by conventional connecting means. Alternatively, jumper cables or backplanes with jumper cabling are employed with conventional pin-and-socket interconnection terminal devices. These arrangements require complex and costly termination processes and hardware and result in impedance circuits of varying lengths. This causes varying impedance and timing so that it may be necessary in some cases to introduce compensating timing circuits that account for differences in the time required for signals to traverse different ones of the circuit paths that interconnect the boards.
An improvement in this arrangement is set out in patent application Ser. No. 801,977, filed Dec. 3, 1991 now U.S. Pat. No. 5,199,881, by Felix M. Oshita, Ronald L. Campbell and Theodore R. Conroy-Wass, for HERMAPHRODITIC INTERCONNECTION OF CIRCUIT BOARDS. This application has the same assignee as the present application and is incorporated herein by reference. In the earlier design hermaphroditic connectors are provided along the edges of circuit boards to be interconnected and are pressed together at their forward faces where contacts are brought into interengagement. This eliminates the need for transitional printed circuit boards or jumper cabling. Conventional pin-and-socket connectors with their attendant disadvantages are eliminated. Nevertheless there is room for improvement in this prior design and the present invention offers distinct advantages over this earlier design.